Located in Tennessee in the East of the United States.
The precursor organization to ORNL was called Clinton Engineer Works, where groundbreaking Manhattan Project experiments and nuclear production took place during World War II
Some key experiments carried out there include:
- 1943: X-10 Graphite Reactor: prototype Plutonium breeder reactor
- isotope separation to purify Uranium-235:
This was an intermediate step between the nuclear chain reaction prototype Chicago Pile-1 and the full blown plutonium mass production at Hanford site. Located in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Exterior of the X-10 Graphite Reactor in 1950
. Source. Produced the enriched uranium used for Little Boy, located in the area/predecessor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.